9/29/12

"Everything
has a beginning and an end. Life is just a cycle of starts and stops. There are
ends we don't desire, but they're inevitable, we have to face them. It's what
being human is all about."

- Jet
Black (Cowboy Bebop)

First of
all, I want to beg your forgiveness for indulging, three times in the span of
four weeks, in those pesky, untranslated detective stories, but Cor Docter has
captured my fascination and this review will round out the trilogy of books
featuring Commissioner Daan Vissering – a kind and intelligent policeman. Even
more good news, I have in my possession a little known, disregarded locked room
mystery from the 1930s and it's up next, but for the time being, bear with me
as I babble about one more of these books.

Now that
I have read all three volumes in this series, I understand what Docter set-out
to do with them and it's an effort that I very much appreciate: Droeve poedel in Delfshaven (Melancholic Poodle in Delfshaven, 1970) was a
Grand Whodunit in the tradition of Agatha Christie, Koude vrouw in Kralingen
(Cold Woman in Kralingen, 1970) re-opened John Dickson Carr's beloved
Locked Room Mystery for business and Rein geheim op rijksweg 13 (Pure
Secrecy on Highway 13, 1971) mimics the signature trademark of Ellery Queen, the Dying Message. However, as mentioned before in these reviews, they're
hardly throwbacks, but more of an overhaul that resettles them in the modern world
of the early 1970s – populated with mostly working and lower class people who are
caught in the meshes of intrigue.

Highway
13 was one of the busiest highways of the country and there’s always someone
traveling down that road, no matter what hour of the day it is, which makes the
plan of two petty thieves, Sander Wils and Peter Ruivenvoorde, all the more audacious.
They want to strip a delivery van, abandoned on the emergency lane, of its valuable
parts, but what they find in the back of the car throws a spoke in their wheels:
slumped between scattered protest signs there’s the body of a man, hit over the
head, and one hand resting in an open canister of red paint. On the inside of
the van the dying man had scrawled "16NK2-" and it’s definitely a sign that
Vissering's plan for Charles Dickens-style Christmas is in jeopardy. The scene
of the crime also provided me with the post title, because the stranded van,
containing the dead man's message, reminded me of a bottle that had just
drifted on shore after an exhausting journey – with the lights and sound of passing
cars standing in for the murmur of the sea and a cone of light from a nearby lighthouse. I thought it was an interesting image.

The thorough investigation of Vissering and his men uncover a number
of plot threads that run in various directions, but still appear to be connected to
the body in the van. There are the signs protesting the pollution of the air
with garish slogans and this turns up a second death, a suicide of the wife of
one of the members of a protest group, and a glass of diluted bleach is one of the key clues
in this little side puzzle. You need a piece of trivial, household
knowledge from this particular period to completely solve it, but it's actually
quite clever and could've easily been used to give a satisfying explanation to a
locked room scenario that turns out to be nothing more than a simple suicide. Docter
only had to let Ella van der Klup jump from an open window inside her locked
apartment, instead from the gallery outside, with her husband snoozing in the
other room.

Vissering
also has to tangle with "Boere-Bram," a Lombard, of sorts, of scrap metal and
junk, who has a link with the murdered man, who turns out to be the straight up
brother of a convicted criminal who has stashed away his loot, hundred fifty
thousand guilders, as a nest egg for when he gets out – which is sooner than
everyone expected! There’s also an old, mysterious man, named Siem Bijl,
bumping into Vissering wherever the investigation takes him and a German
bayonet is also thrust into the case. As to be expected by now, Docter pulls
off a conclusion as classical as it's satisfying. It's like the back blurb
said, "This time no Carter Dickson effects, but 'keys' that are reminiscent of
the best plots of Ellery Queen, Peter Quentin (sic) or the immortal
Dorothy Sayers.”

Lastly, I
should mention that Pure Secrecy is also very strong in its commentary on
modern society and its condemnation of the annexation of Overschie by Rotterdam
– polluted and defaced in the process. Highway 13 was carved right through it and "housing barracks" (i.e. flats) tore the old atmosphere and community asunder. Docter
already warned and apologized in his introduction that his description of the
then present-day Overschie would be a very colored one – because the old
Overschie was very dear to his heart.

Docter's detective
novels may be steeped in old traditions, but he made a valiant effort at updating
them to modern times and, more often than not, succeeded in doing so and this earned
himself a place among the ranks of post-GAD writers who proved the old adage
that a classic never goes out of style.

9/23/12

"Everywhere,
as he knew, there were husbands and lovers who cherished the scars of their
boyhood and who lived like dreamers in a world of reality."

- Dr.
Eustace Hailey (The Red Scar, 1928)

Robert
McNair Wilson, a Scottish physician, wrote a score of mystery novels, under the
assumed name of "Anthony Wynne," during the first half of the twentieth century
and his series detective, Dr. Eustace Hailey, preferred Occam's Razor over a
lancet to dissect a miracle problem.

Dr.
Hailey is a specialist on the human mind, who constantly plunders his snuffbox
and acts as an unofficial consultant when a case is taking on all the
appearances of a mystifying, storybook crime – investigated and solved by the
likes of Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown. Over a dozen of these recorded cases
involves murderers who defied more than just man made laws as they left their
victims behind the sturdy doors of locked rooms or struck them down in front of
witnesses, while appearing to be completely invisible! Naturally, this penchant
for locked rooms attracted my attention and last year I had an opportunity to
sample two of his novels, The Silver Scale Mystery (1931) and The Green Knife (1932), and expected The Red Scar (1928) to be more of
the same, but this one can hardly be compared, in any shape or form, to the
previous entries I have read.

For one
thing, The Red Scar hardly qualifies as a locked room mystery and the
impossible situation described in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders and
Other Impossible Crimes (1991) is a semi-impossible at best and not even
the focus of the plot. Heck, the only references to locked doors and
impenetrable walls were allusions to a prison facility. But even more
interesting was that it read like a masculine take on Agatha Christie's Eternal
Triangle and more. It riffs on an old cliché, pulls a least likely suspect and
a serious attempt is made at a surprise twist, but an alert and knowledgeable
reader can anticipate a few of the surprises.

The plot
of The Red Scar revolves around a small cluster of people, who, in turn,
revolve around Raoul Featherstone – a painter with an insatiable appetite for
women. The other players include the sculptor Alaistar Diarmid, his cousin
Phyllis and her husband, Major Lionel Leyland, and the beautiful Echo
Wildermere. You guessed it, both women are involved with Raoul, much to the
chagrin of both gentlemen, and before long a tragedy unfolds in the artist's studio
and the aftermath muddles the water considerably. Raoul is mortally wounded
with a knife, Lionel is beaten up and Echo's clothes are torn and drenched in
blood. Raoul’s body disappears under Alistair’s nose, when he attempts to
cover-up the crime in order to protect Echo. A tangled mess that Hailey has to
unsnarl, however, keeping his head is more of a trial than keeping it cool.

There's a
decidedly hardboiled slate to this story with a lot a physical altercations and
Dr. Hailey gets the brunt of it, but that's all I can tell without spoiling any
of the fun.

Anyway,
Raoul's charred remains are eventually retrieved from a burned out car, halfway
through the story, and two people are charged and placed in the dock to answer
for a murder they might not have committed. Dr. Hailey is convinced that there's
more to the case and continues his investigation as well as a race against the clock,
which had a good touch of suspense. I have to admit, though, that I was
skeptical at first and feared one of his overly melodramatic finals, but he efficiently tied everything together with a sobering explanation. In my review
of The Green Knife, I mentioned that Wynne read like a writer who
arrived on the scene thirty to forty years too late, but here it felt like he
was a few years ahead of time – looking back on the detective stories from the
past twenty years or so. At least, that’s the impression I got from the book
and the solution. Minus the satire, of course.

I have to
mention one downside and that’s fluctuating quality of the writing, but then
again, that might just have been my fractured reading of the book. All in all,
this just might be a more accomplished detective story than The Silver Scale
Mystery, in spite of lacking an ingenious contrived locked room trick, and
a better novel overall than you would expect from a writer often criticized for
his overwrought writing and cardboard characters.

9/17/12

"You
had those typical neighborhood murder cases, with the remarkable intimacy of a
John Dickson Carr story or Agatha Christie's train murder... This seemed
such a closed ward murder, bound to the invisible walls of the rayon."

- Commissioner
Daan Vissering (Droeve poedel in Delfshaven, 1970)

Earlier
this month, I reviewed Koude vrouw in Kralingen (Cold Woman in
Kralingen, 1970) by Cor Docter, a pulp writer who had a trilogy of
full-fledged detective novels to his credit that merged the style of the Dutch
topographical police story with the type of fantastic plots usually found in
the most imaginative works of John Dickson Carr and Ellery Queen, and flung in
an seemingly impossible situation for good measure. Needless to say, I was
intrigued, even if some parts of the solution gave pause for thought, and now I
feel even more drawn to his work after finishing Droeve poedel in Delfshaven
(Melancholic Poodle in Delfshaven, 1970).

Melancholic
Poodle in Delfshaven
opens with the muffled howls of a dog, muzzle smeared with blood and a trail of
identical substance leading to the doorsteps of a house abandoned by its owner.
Commissioner Daan Vissering is holding the leash of the investigation and he
and his team begin to sniff around for clues.

The
missing homeowner is one Gerrit Vledser, a shady moneylender, who, according to
the evidence, was hit over the head with the dog’s food bowl – before he was
either taken away or fled from his attacker(s). They find a hand drawn map,
with markings, and Vissering drags information from the neighbor that includes
shreds of a heated conversation, the time Vledser may have been hit and two
young men who associated with him. More than enough to go on, but other
problems are emerging that ask for the commissioner's attention.

Exploding
fireworks cloak the statue of Admiral Piet Hein in smoke, noise and confusion.
Somewhere else, an exploding smoke bomb has the same effect. Senseless pranks
or is there a darker meaning? Vissering has his own thoughts about it and
suspects a connection, which is confirmed when the young men turn up and knock
one of his men, Grijphand, into the hospital. And before long, Vledser turns up
again. Behind the statue of Van 't Hoff. His head caved in... again!

Scene of the Crime: Van 't Hoff statue

Melancholic
Poodle progresses
in the same, absolutely delightful, way as Cold Woman, thickening the
plot with each succeeding chapter, however, I found this to be less of a
throwback than the other one – which dribbed with the influences from Anthony Abbot, John Dickson Carr and S.S. van Dine. Not that I have any complaints
about that, but the publisher advertised this series as classic detective stories
reinvented and this book definitely felt like it delivered on that promise.

There
was, for one, more emphasize on characters, or, at least, a series of interesting
character portraits. One of them told the story of one of those many, and often
forgotten, tragedies from the war, but even more interesting was the back story
of Grijphand. Docter only needed a few pages to make you understand what made
that man tick instead of drawing those events from his youth out over a couple
of hundred pages. It was just a pleasant balance between plot and character. Although, there may have been a tad bit more plot than character.

The plot
unfolds at a slow, methodical pace, peppered with a suspenseful wrap-up of one
of their problems, before the murderer is confronted in a classic denouement
and receives a lecture from Vissering on the Chesterton-effect – which is nothing
short of brilliant. Yes. The identity of the murderer is a revelation in the best
GAD tradition, but with a decidedly modern touch.

Docter showed a skillful hand
at tying all the plot threads together and make it logically click on every
layer of the story. All in
all, a very fun and clever detective story to read.

9/14/12

In previous
postings dealing with that duet of gumshoes, the armchair bound Nero Wolfe and the
quick-witted Archie Goodwin, I explained that my enjoyment of this series
does not come from ingeniously contrived plots, which they seldom sport, but
from the characters and spending a few hours in their company. However, it's
always a treat, served as one of Fritz's opulent banquets, when Rex Stout put
some thought and effort into his intrigues – making Gambit (1962) a
noteworthy entry in the late-period corpus.

When Gambit
opens, we find Nero Wolfe tearing the pages from a copy of a 3rd edition of
Webster's dictionary, deeming it as "intolerably offensive," as Archie
Goodwin ushers a prospective client into the office. Sally Blount has $22.000
in cash on her and wants Wolfe to prove her father innocent of the murder of Paul Jerin,
a chess maven who was poisoned at the Gambit Club under peculiar circumstances.
Paul Jerin was taking on twelve opponents, at once, under "blindfold"
conditions, while alone in a room, separated from the other players, with only
messengers moving between them to whisper the moves.

The
twelve-man blindfold match was Matthew Blount's idea, who wanted to publicly
humiliate Jerin and concocted a scheme, however, when Jerin is taking ill
mid-match and dies in the hospital from arsenic poison – Blount is arrested as
his murderer. After all, it was Blount who was kind enough to supply Jerin with
his customary cup of hot chocolate, which appears to have been the container
for the poison, but Sally refuses to believe that her father's plans had
included murder and has very little faith in his attorney, Dan Kalmus, who's
apparently in love with her mother. Wolfe and Goodwin have their work cut out
for them!

I have to
admit that the who-and howdunit angles weren't particular difficult to solve
and most of their work consisted of prying loose a piece of information from
Blount and Kalmus, which merely confirms a suspicion Wolfe and his readers have
been harboring all along, but it's hard not to notice the effort Stout put into
constructing this plot. I appreciate that, especially from this writer, and that's
not something that can be said of all his books from this period. Even at gun
point, I would be unable to supply even a synopsis of The Final Deduction (1961) or
Please, Pass the Guilt (1973), and I don't think I have read them that
long before I began blogging.

But how
Wolfe wraps up this case does not only take a slice of the cake, but the whole
thing and you know he has the appetite for it! I also wanted to glare daggers
at the writing team who worked on the splendid A&E TV-series for not
considering this book! Wolfe's gambit tears a page (another sacrilege against
the printed word between the covers of this novel) from the playbook he used in
The Doorbell Rang (1965) with the adaptation being even better and the last
twenty-or-so minutes, in which Wolfe springs his trap, with one favorite scene
following another favorite scene, easily makes it one of my all time favorite episodes
from any detective series.

Wolfe
mentioned in this last portion of the story that books could be written on the
varieties of conduct of men in a pickle. If he even wants to read such a book, I can recommend him Gambit by Rex Stout.

9/9/12

I once
read either an article or a review, which floated somewhere on the web, concerning
historical mysteries and it mentioned in passing that ancient Rome, as a
backdrop for these tales, has become one of the most well-trodden periods in
history and that made a lot of sense – remembering their penchant for
cloak-and-dagger politics and poisonous intrigues.

Take Emperor Nero, the John Rhode of the Ancient World, who ordered the construction of a particular
ingenious death trap, a collapsible boat, to kill his mother Agrippina. After
having failed to take his mother out, Nero simply dispatches a band of
assassins and according to one of the stories, Agrippina ordered the
mercenaries to bury a dagger in her womb. The stories practically write
themselves!

One part
has to look on, helplessly, as their children are whisked away and held to
ransom, while veterans of a small band of Constantine's army, lauded for
trapping and cutting down a group of Picts, are brutally murdered and
mutilated, one after another, according to the practices of their old enemies.
Empress Helena puts Claudia, a secret agent, on the case, scouring for clues
like a mouse scurrying for bits of food, but a third problem, much closer to home, also
demands her attention. Her uncle Polybius disinterred the corpse of a perfectly
preserved girl from his garden and it's assumed to be the remains of a
Christian martyr.

More than
enough twisted threads for a good yarn, however, The Queen of the Night,
plot-wise, turned out to be one of the least challenging and unoriginal
historical mysteries I have read from Doherty.

The
perfectly preserved remains of the young woman hardly poses a challenge for any
modern reader, especially ones specialized in detective stories, and eventually peters
out. Just as easy is figuring out who masterminded the kidnapping and the only
interesting part was how the strand of the army killings intertwined with the
kidnappings. I really got the idea that Doherty half-assed the plot here,
taking bits and pieces from his other novels, and resettled them in Imperial
Rome – like the murdered veterans from The Slayers of Seth (2001).

The
Queen of the Night
is as readable as any of Doherty's other, and more successful, efforts, but the
plot shows that he either had an off-day or feels more at home in the castle
strewn landscapes of mediaeval England or the sun blasted deserts of ancient
Egypt. For completists only.

9/7/12

"...there
is always one moment that stands out from all the others, one picture that
remains when all else has faded."

- Harley
Quin (Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Mr. Quin, 1930)

The plan
itself was as flawless as an expertly cut diamond, but my long-time arch
nemesis, Father Time, with its clock handles sometimes resembling the drooping
mustache or furiously raised eyebrows of Fu-Manchu, foiled the plans I had for
posting a fresh review today and I'm afraid this post will reek of filler
material. But rest assured, I wanted to post these covers for weeks and this
provided me with an opportunity to do so.

It's also
a follow up, of sorts, on my previous review, in which I discussed Cor Docter's
Koude vrouw in Kralingen (Cold Woman in Kralingen, 1970), a Dutch
police procedural written in the style of Anthony Abbot and other members of
the Van Dine-Queen School of Detection, and it was another, significant step up
from the previous, classically groomed, Dutch-language mysteries I have read. I
really have to thank De Spanningsblog, a blog dedicated to promoting modern thrillers, for putting
me on the trail of these stories that are literary wasting away in
biblioblivion.

In a
monthly item, "Plaat van de Maand," Wim van Eyle dusts off the work of writers
now long forgotten and their work were a lot closer to their overseas
contemporaries than most of writers laboring in the field today – which I
sometimes still find hard to fathom. But also beautifully illustrated and
enticing book covers was once an art form over here and have selected a few of
them. Note that I have read none of these books, but they have been added to my
wish-list.

De
dood legt in (Death
Lays In, 1946) was J. Anthonisz sole detective novel and the only other
scrap of information I can give is the books subtitle: een detective-roman van
de Hollandsche waterkant (a detective novel from the Dutch waterfront).

De moord
in den nachttrein (The
Murder on the Night-Train, 1924) was one of the twenty-some mysteries that
flowed from the pen of Jules van Dam, a pseudonym of an unidentified writer, but
the name of pulp novelist L.A. Steffers has been mentioned.

Anton
Beuving was a Jack-of-All-Trades, who dabbled in juvenile fiction, radio plays,
pulp stories and penning a slew of mysteries for the lending libraries, of
which Het mystery van de zeven skeletten (The Mystery of Seven
Skeletons, 1953) was one, but this also makes them next to impossible to
find on today’s secondhand book market.

Bob van
Oyen's Na afloop moord (Afterwards, Murder, 1953) won a mystery
writing contest, organized by publisher Bruna, and followed up this success
with a series of detective novels featuring Anton IJsvogel – a pipe smoking army
Captain. The cover of Van Oyen’s first book suggests an Ellerian dying message.

"Boekan
Saja," meaning "Not I," was the penname of C.W. Wormser, who used
Dutch-Indonesia as a backdrop for three mystery novels and Het geheim van de
tempelruïne (The Secret of the Temple Ruin, 1946) is in my
possession.

Wie heeft
den admiraal gewurgd
(Who Strangled the Admiral, 1937) by E.L. Franken. That's all I can tell
about this writer or title, but the cover looks absolutely awesome!

Een
vliegtuigraadsel (An
Airplane Riddle, 1935) was one of the thirteen mysteries published under the
byline Hugo Koerts and included here to complete the Christie-King set of
mysteries that take place aboard train, ship or airplane.

9/2/12

Cor Docter (1925-2006) was a Dutch pulp writer whose books, under such bylines as "Francis Hobard" and "Salem Pinto," were in high-demand throughout the 1950-and
60s and became one of the household names that kept neighborhood bookshops and
district libraries in business. He also penned an authoritative work entitled Grossiers
in moord en doodslag: veelschrijvers uit Nederland en Vlaanderen (Wholesalers
in Homicide: Writers from Holland and Flanders, 1997) and published three,
classically-styled, detective novels under his own name and these were rocketed
to the top of my wish list after stumbling across information that put them in
the same category as Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr – which is no
exaggeration as I have just finished reading Koude vrouw in Kralingen (Cold
Woman in Kralingen, 1970).

I have to
start of by saying that Cor Docter struck me as a very knowledgeable man, who
both loved and respected his craft. The introduction, of a single page, is a
testament to this and has a very keen observation on somewhat of a Dutch
specialty, the topographical police story.

"...a
topographical detective novel shouldn’t just spew pages of information on a
particular region, but turn that knowledge into an essential part of the story."

Docter
followed his own advice, for the most part, making a decent amount of the
history of Kralingen relevant to the plot and even the bits that weren't were,
nonetheless, interesting for anyone even remotely interested in history. It
also gave the book character.

Cold
Woman in Kralingen
opens when a surging storm begins tugging the trees and gardener Harm Jispen is
letting out Aart van der Linzen, a student he has been assisting with his
thesis by allowing to be recorded while telling old folktales in the dialect of
Boertange, before fortifying the house and planting himself in front of the
television. But the ominous sound of shattering glass lures him from his safe
home to inspect his greenhouses and walks straight into the blade of a knife.
Enter Commissioner Daan Vissering (a sober minded man from the province of Friesland)
and his team of policemen, who go over the scene of the crime with a fine-tooth
comb and diligently hunt down leads as they speculate and theorize about every
facet of the case. Including the tantalizing problem of why Jispen needed forty
eggs, every week!

This
makes Docter a lot closer to Anthony Abbot, author of a number of mysteries
featuring Commissioner Thatcher Colt of Centre Street, and other members of the
Van Dine-Queen School than to John Dickson Carr, who was an unapologetic
romanticist. However, the link is not entirely unjustified, because Carr was
the master of the locked room mystery and this one has just such a problem –
and it gave me quite a turn in spite of being handled in a sober manner. No such
nonsense about ghosts and goblins, but sometimes their absence can be even more
unnerving!

Roughly
fifty pages into the story, we switch from the murder of Harm Jispen to one of
the weekly meetings of Kostbaar Kralingen (Precious Kralingen), a
shadowy society who apparently gather to appreciate the history of Kralingen,
but we immediately learn that it's a front and the lectures are just copied
texts being read with nobody really paying any attention to what is being said
– the speaker least of all. I also loved how the story transitioned with the
society members reading about Jispen's murder in the newspaper. This makes for
a pleasing, mystifying read that, uhm, thickens the plot, but the best part is
yet to come.

Cor Docter, "Prince of the Lending Libraries"

The
spider in this web, Magda Quarz, uncharacteristically, disappears from the
meeting and apparently locked herself up in the bedroom. There's light coming
from the crack underneath the door, but there's nothing that can be seen
through the vacant keyhole and then it happens: when they decide to look under
the door someone, from within the room, forcefully throws the key under the
door into the hallway. Goosebumps! They immediately rush the room, but the only
person in the room is Magda - sitting in front of the dressing mirror, dead as
a doornail, with the markings of strangulation on her throat.

Shocked
and wary, the members of Precious Kralingen decide to keep the police out
of it, for the time being, and shovel the blame on her 17-year-old son, Harold,
who's flogged and driven out of a second-story window. Convinced that the
confession they have beaten out of Harold will keep the police out of there
business, they call them in and they send Vissering and his men. You guessed it;
he isn't fooled, not in the least, especially after finding another clue that
consists of forty eggs. A cat-and-mouse game ensues, in which Vissering has to
break down the iron-clad resolve of an entire group, link by link, and
the way he went about it reminded me a bit of Columbo. You have to understand
that Vissering comes from the province and thus not stand, intellectually, in
high regard with most of the members of this society. A mistake that was the
folly of many murderers who crossed swords with Columbo. When will they ever
learn not to underestimate a slouching prise de fer!

Vissering
eventually learns what happened in that hallway and figures out how the trick
was done, but they show their traces of his past as a pulp writer and I have my
reservations about it, however, it was completely original and entirely fair. I
have to give Docter props for keeping me from seeing what was blindingly
obvious for nearly the entire journey. No idea how I could not have figured
that out for so long and it was absolutely simple, but still, it lacked
convincibility. Hm. According to my spelling checker that's not a word. Well, you
know what I mean. I should mention that I'm not placing Docter in the Gild of
Second Stringers, you almost have to forgive a writer some imperfections
when delivering a complex and mostly well-done plot, and it's one of the best
Dutch-language locked room mysteries I have read to date. A genuine pleasure to read.

The Usual Suspect

An Elementary Observation

Welcome to the niche corner, dedicated to the great detective stories of yore and their neo-classical descendants.

Witnesses' Statements

"It's my job to fan the fires of your imagination with tales of doom and gloom; right now I have another chilling tale for you. A tale of danger and mystery..."- Vincent Price (Grandmaster of the Macabre)."The detectives who explain miracles, even more than their colleagues who clarify more secular matters, play the Promethean role of asserting man's intellect and inventiveness even against the Gods."- Anthony Boucher.

"I like my murders to be frequent, gory, and grotesque. I like some vividness of colour and imagination flashing out of my plot, since I cannot find a story enthralling solely on the grounds that it sounds as though it might really have happened. I do not care to hear the hum of everyday life; I much prefer to hear the chuckle of the great Hanaud or the deadly bells of Fenchurch St Paul."- Dr. Gideon Fell (telling it like it is since 1933).